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About Litespeed

Hi, I've been doing some research on litespeed and I'm a bit confused.

Does Litespeed really help in reducing server resource usage? Or does it just speed up websites?

For example, now I have a server running apache and I host many websites. If I install Litespeed will it help me host more websites on the server? Does Litespeed deserve the fee?

Comments

  • give it a shot - https://openlitespeed.org/
    would probably work best as a real webserver and not a reverse proxy.

    Thanked by 1thecreator_
  • thecreator_thecreator_ Member
    edited January 2023

    @treesmokah said:
    give it a shot - https://openlitespeed.org/
    would probably work best as a real webserver and not a reverse proxy.

    Hello. Thank you for your response. Yes I know openlitespeed and I am using it on cyberpanel with a vps.

    But I'm actually trying to understand litespeed technically on this one. So does litespeed really work wonders? (enterprise)

    Especially many web hosting providers use litespeed on their servers. I want to know its advantages.

  • EthernetServersEthernetServers Member, Patron Provider
    edited January 2023

    @thecreator_ said:
    I want to know its advantages.

    Have a read of https://www.litespeedtech.com/products/litespeed-web-server/editions (more specifically, scroll down to "Detailed feature comparison").

  • @thecreator_ said:
    Hi, I've been doing some research on litespeed and I'm a bit confused.

    Does Litespeed really help in reducing server resource usage? Or does it just speed up websites?

    For example, now I have a server running apache and I host many websites. If I install Litespeed will it help me host more websites on the server? Does Litespeed deserve the fee?

    Yes it will. Apache is the most resource hungry one among litespeed, openlitespeed, Apache and Nginx.

    Litespeed variations performs way better out of box both in term of CPU usage as well as handling max connection at once.
    But this is achieved, by utilizing their internal cache system, which is on by default.

    Same performance can be achieved by using nginx and a cache like varnish. But I feel, it's overhead to setup varnish.

  • FatGrizzlyFatGrizzly Member, Host Rep

    @srch07 said:

    @thecreator_ said:
    Hi, I've been doing some research on litespeed and I'm a bit confused.

    Does Litespeed really help in reducing server resource usage? Or does it just speed up websites?

    For example, now I have a server running apache and I host many websites. If I install Litespeed will it help me host more websites on the server? Does Litespeed deserve the fee?

    Yes it will. Apache is the most resource hungry one among litespeed, openlitespeed, Apache and Nginx.

    Litespeed variations performs way better out of box both in term of CPU usage as well as handling max connection at once.
    But this is achieved, by utilizing their internal cache system, which is on by default.

    Same performance can be achieved by using nginx and a cache like varnish. But I feel, it's overhead to setup varnish.

    Wouldn't that be an Apache + nginx + varnish setup? Cause most clients and most scripts have . htaccess by default

  • LeviLevi Member
    edited January 2023

    @thecreator_ said:
    Hi, I've been doing some research on litespeed and I'm a bit confused.

    Does Litespeed really help in reducing server resource usage? Or does it just speed up websites?

    For example, now I have a server running apache and I host many websites. If I install Litespeed will it help me host more websites on the server? Does Litespeed deserve the fee?

    Depends on your usage. Millions of visitors per day? Than you will see some savings on hardware. If not - stick to good old apache and save money.

  • @FatGrizzly said:

    @srch07 said:

    @thecreator_ said:
    Hi, I've been doing some research on litespeed and I'm a bit confused.

    Does Litespeed really help in reducing server resource usage? Or does it just speed up websites?

    For example, now I have a server running apache and I host many websites. If I install Litespeed will it help me host more websites on the server? Does Litespeed deserve the fee?

    Yes it will. Apache is the most resource hungry one among litespeed, openlitespeed, Apache and Nginx.

    Litespeed variations performs way better out of box both in term of CPU usage as well as handling max connection at once.
    But this is achieved, by utilizing their internal cache system, which is on by default.

    Same performance can be achieved by using nginx and a cache like varnish. But I feel, it's overhead to setup varnish.

    Wouldn't that be an Apache + nginx + varnish setup? Cause most clients and most scripts have . htaccess by default

    Nope Nginx + Varnish.
    I don't like Apache for our projects, unless it's a enterprise customer paying the bills.
    Resource usage for Apache is crazy compared to other two on concurrent connections.

    For simplicity and headache of not configuring varnish, ols is the way.

  • ArkasArkas Moderator

    @srch07 said: But I feel, it's overhead to setup varnish.

    But not to setup openlitespeed? In any case, I usually go with Nginx and a variation of something else.

  • if you websites are based on WordPress then openlitespeed is a best option, you will see a huge difference

  • kdhkdh Member

    If you just utilize event MPM on httpd, the speed is beyond acceptable. It becomes fast enough for the static resources which Nginx is known to be fast for, and still serves a decent speed for PHP scripts which Nginx is known to be terrible.

    I still think that Litespeed is just like a web server that is specially designed for WordPress.
    If you have a WordPress-Specialized Hosting or if half or more of your customers uses WordPress, go for it.
    But for others, I really can't find that much reason to use that.

  • FatGrizzlyFatGrizzly Member, Host Rep
    edited January 2023

    @Arkas said:

    @srch07 said: But I feel, it's overhead to setup varnish.

    But not to setup openlitespeed? In any case, I usually go with Nginx and a variation of something else.

    Comparing OP's threads, he's gonna be using this server for shared hosting. aka automatic setup(if directadmin)

  • @thecreator_ said: For example, now I have a server running apache and I host many websites. If I install Litespeed will it help me host more websites on the server?

    Yes. OLS & Litespeed not the same in terms of stability & performance.
    OpenLiteSpeed in my opinion after long period of usage - piece of shit. Raw, bugged, crashing piece of shit. Litespeed in totally different league, and much more stable.

  • miaumiau Member
    edited January 2023

    Its overhyped piece with rigged benchmark posted all over the web by their own employee disguising as independent third party.

  • @miau said:
    Its overhyped piece with rigged benchmark posted all over the web by their own employee disguising as independent third party.

    So @eva2000 is also a disguised litespeed employee for having published benchmarks that litespeed is better out of the box than nginx, while for nginx you need to properly tune it to match litespeed performance.

    Thanked by 1ElonBezos
  • If you're only hosting/serving static content, nginx is the way to go. If you're doing anything WordPress related, Litespeed is way better. Configuring it properly is a lot more complicated (less tutorials I guess?) My OLS instance is handling ~500 concurrent users on a WordPress installation with 4GB RAM and a single 2.5GHz core just fine, combined with Redis caching.

  • kdhkdh Member

    @BigDongLong said:
    If you're only hosting/serving static content, nginx is the way to go. If you're doing anything WordPress related, Litespeed is way better. Configuring it properly is a lot more complicated (less tutorials I guess?) My OLS instance is handling ~500 concurrent users on a WordPress installation with 4GB RAM and a single 2.5GHz core just fine, combined with Redis caching.

    TL;DR: If many of your customers use WordPress / You are selling a separate 'Suppper-WordPressy-Web-Hosting' plan to customers - Litespeed is to go. But for else, no reason to use it.

  • @kdh said: If you just utilize event MPM on httpd, the speed is beyond acceptable

    I agree with this. On high-traffic websites, an alternate MPM (the event MPM) is preferable because it has the ability to serve a large amount of requests while maintaining low memory usage. It does so by using threads to serve requests. It retains some of the stability of a process-based server by keeping multiple processes available, each with many threads so a thread potentially misbehaving would only affect all the other threads in the same process. Additionally, the event MPM uses a dedicated thread to deal with kept-alive connections, and hands requests down to child threads only when a request has actually been made. That allows those threads to free back up immediately after the request is completed.

    For really heavy php usage server try litespeed enterprise.

  • FatGrizzlyFatGrizzly Member, Host Rep
    edited January 2023

    @Thundas said:

    @miau said:
    Its overhyped piece with rigged benchmark posted all over the web by their own employee disguising as independent third party.

    So @eva2000 is also a disguised litespeed employee for having published benchmarks that litespeed is better out of the box than nginx, while for nginx you need to properly tune it to match litespeed performance.

    Ah yes. Compare a raw steak(out of the box litespeed) with cooked steak(configured nginx). Absolute intelligence.

  • eva2000eva2000 Veteran
    edited January 2023

    @Thundas said: So @eva2000 is also a disguised litespeed employee for having published benchmarks that litespeed is better out of the box than nginx, while for nginx you need to properly tune it to match litespeed performance.

    LOL, you can believe whatever you want - it's your own reality. I'm curious where are you getting your experience from regarding Litespeed? How long have you been using Litespeed, Apache and Nginx? I see a lot of folks making claims of such and such but they rarely have the experience to back it up unfortunately. In this current day and age, there isn't really any excuse, you can get hourly billed VPS servers and test the web servers yourself and provide your own benchmarks/metrics to compare web servers for your usage to backup any of your claims. @thecreator_ if you really want hands on experience, just test on a test hourly billed VPS and see for yourself :)

    For folks who want to delve into reality and read up of my thoughts after using Litespeed for ~14+ yrs (in both standalone Litespeed without cPanel and with cPanel) and Nginx for ~12yrs and Apache for 22+ yrs, you can read the replies I posted for a similar question asked on my forums at https://community.centminmod.com/threads/is-lsapi-litespeed-faster-than-php-fpm-nginx-etc-or-not.19153/. More relevant replies start at post https://community.centminmod.com/threads/is-lsapi-litespeed-faster-than-php-fpm-nginx-etc-or-not.19153/#post-81610 (Litespeed v5.4 and above are faster than Nginx from my own tests linked/mentioned in that thread - while Litespedd v5.3 and below had Nginx close).

    Folks also need to read these comments in the context of the time it was made i.e. even the fact that Litespeed v5.4+ being different/faster to Litespeed v5.3 and below. Over the years, CPU and server hardware and software i.e. web servers, PHP, MySQL and their optimisations combined, have also shaped web server performance overall. It was a lot harder for me 20 yrs ago to scale a 5000 user concurrency discussion forum on Apache 1.x, PHP 4.x and MySQL 3.23 on the hardware at the time than it is now with advancements in just concurrency handling for PHP and MySQL.

    20yrs ago, software tuning and scaling for high user concurrency was a lot more complex and harder to do than with current server hardware. Fast hardware can, to a certain extent, mask general user experienced server performance when testing lower traffic/user concurrency workloads. So if you only get hit with 100 concurrent users on modern fast hardware, you aren't going to really be able to tell the difference in your web applications between Litespeed vs OpenLitespeed vs Nginx vs Apache vs Caddy etc. Especially, when PHP and MySQL backend response times factor into web server's overall response times i.e. TTFB.

  • eva2000eva2000 Veteran
    edited January 2023

    @thecreator_ said:
    Hi, I've been doing some research on litespeed and I'm a bit confused.

    Does Litespeed really help in reducing server resource usage? Or does it just speed up websites?

    For example, now I have a server running apache and I host many websites. If I install Litespeed will it help me host more websites on the server? Does Litespeed deserve the fee?

    In the spirit of keeping thread on topic, it all depends and is all relative. It's not really a matter of what you use but how you use it. If you knew absolutely nothing about optimising or tuning Apache and Litespeed web servers and just want to install and forget config. Litespeed can potentially be faster for web server requests to a certain extent. But then once you reach a certain amount of concurrent traffic loads, both Apache and even Litespeed may need optimization/tuning. In general from my experience though Litespeed will be able to handle more concurrent user traffic before tuning and optimization is needed compared to Apache and partially that is due to more efficient server resource usage. From my own experience for Litespeed that starts at around 300,000 to 500,000 unique IP visitors/day mark when I have to roll up my sleeves and tune stuff.

    But remember when you measure a real web requests you may have other factors that impact response time and resource usage i.e. TTFB i.e. how fast MySQL and PHP response and pass data to web server. I posted a TTFB optimization guide on Cloudflare community forums for optimizing 3 segments outlined at https://community.cloudflare.com/t/improving-time-to-first-byte-ttfb-with-cloudflare/390367/1. Segment 3 is web server and backend while Segements 1/2 are factors which Cloudflare can help with i.e. improving client facing side TTFB and thus Core Web Vital metrics like LCP.

    A practical example is when someone says they tried Litespeed and Apache and there's no difference in TTFB but overlook that maybe their MySQL backend performance and response time is a factor to how fast data is passed onto PHP and in turn how fast the web server servers that data to visitor. Or their web page's design and layout has poor Core Web Vital metrics i.e. too much javascript and poor LCP and they use those metrics to evaluate performance.

    As to whether Litespeed is worth the price, it is relative. For clients I've worked with they managed to reduce total number of load balanced web servers from 5x Apache servers to 2x Litespeed servers and handle 3x times more traffic 1-1.5 million unique IP visitors/day. So for them they saved between $800-1000 per month per server = up to 3x 1000 = $3,000/month in server costs with just 2x Litespeed web server 4 CPU licenses at the time. Client considered it worth it. This was ~2yrs before I even touched Nginx so the choice was only between Litespeed or Apache.

  • If you want to set up a reverse proxy for websites, I would recommend Caddy. It's high performance and easy to config alongside with auto-ssl features and so on.

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